The Great Northeast

Good times in the great northeast! I'm a little late in blogging about this, but...so what. The past week has been a little hectic with rehearsals and a show (and life beyond all of that), so I blew it off. 

Thursday: We flew in to BWI (Baltimore), where the crew, van, and trailer picked us up on our way to Silver Spring, Maryland for our first show.

Silver Spring has a Fillmore--the brand "Fillmore" (like San Fran/Bill Graham Fillmore) has been hung on several cool rooms around the country by Live Nation. We've played a few of them: Charlotte, TLA in Philadelphia (which has since gone back to being the Theatre of the Living Arts, and Irving Plaza (which has gone back to being Irving Plaza). If we had a heavy schedule of Houses of Blues and Fillmores, that'd be cool with me. Nice crews and stages in every one. Maybe they should build one in Nashville?

Anyway, this was maybe not a popular move with our friends at The Hamilton in DC, but I like this place! It's a bigger room, and considering that it's no big deal for us to pack The Hamilton, maybe this is the next step? Or maybe we alternate?

This was a pretty good show, from what I remember. It had been nearly two weeks since our last Yacht Rock show (in LA!), so there might have a been a little rust, but we got back into the groove pretty easily.

photo cred: Kaitlyn Peel

Friday: We stopped for lunch at this mom-and-pop Italian sandwich place called Ioannoni's (5 vowels, 4 consonants) in Delaware. Always a line from the counter to the door. Always somebody on hold on the phone. Always two people yelling to two other people behind the counter, and another person calling out the names of the completed orders. My wife would say, "They're Italian! What do you expect?"

No veggie option. I ate a meatball sandwich instead. Really good.

On to New York City. We made pretty good time to Irving Plaza (there before load in time!), leaving us almost an hour to kill. I went for a walk.

warming up

Sold out! This show was one of our most epic New York shows. The sound was great, the set list was great, and the crowd was tremendous. Our special guest for the evening was Albert Bouchard, famous as the drummer (and cowbell player!) for Blue Öyster Cult. He joined us on cowbell and vocals for Don't Fear the Reaper. Woah!

The rest of the night was equally great. Sometimes it's difficult (because of the in ear monitors) to gauge how the crowd is enjoying the show. On this gig, I could tell. We hit a home run. Even when someone began releasing smiley face balloons, we were unfazed--Zach collected them all, and eventually began stabbing them with a knife. I tried to pop one on Monkeyboy's head (no luck). Together, we burst it with the headstock of his guitar, which unfortunately made his guitar go out of tune. So much for that.

Post gig pizza stop around the corner from Irving Plaza.

Saturday: We continued up the east coast to Boston for two sold out shows at The Sinclair.

Two sold out shows; we played one complete gig, they cleared the room, and we had to do it again! Getting back to the energy of the first set for the second was tough. By the time it was all over, we were FRIED.

photo cred: Karyn Estrella

I'm really proud of my sax solo on this one (around 1:25). That horn part sounds good, too. Another great mix by Kip!



Somehow, we persevered, finished the gig, got all the gear back into the trailer, and made it to the hotel. Then this happened...

(Monkeyboy)

March Mojo Dojo

Scott Glazer called me Tuesday about playing with his group Mojo Dojo Wednesday night at Blind Willie's. What a great group of guys he'd assembled--John Sandfort on tenor sax, Brandon Bush on keyboard, Micah Caldwell on guitar, Justin Chesarek on drums, and Scott on bass! I had a wonderful time listening, hanging out, and hanging on with the high level of musicianship. Maaaaan! Everybody played well, and everybody was really cool. One of my favorite times playing this gig.

Vegas 2017

What a crappy weekend for Daylight Savings Time! We made it to our hotel in LA around 2 AM, which instantly became 3 AM (spring forward!), and then we were out the door back towards Las Vegas at 8 AM. Ouch.

pit stop

This week's Vegas gig was a corporate event at Mandalay Bay. It's our fourth year playing this event, though the format has changed from an "American Idol" style show with seven or eight featured songs to more of a "Tonight Show" band thing, playing short snippets of songs (around fifty-five in total) to cover the transitions between speakers, awards, and video presentations.

We made it back to Vegas around lunchtime, ate, set up, and sat around at a rehearsal for a few hours. Very little music was made. Thank god for the mindlessness of smart phones. We were released around 7 PM.

Previously, we've always stayed at Mandalay Bay, but this year our hotel rooms were next door in the Luxor. I was curious to see what rooms would look like inside the pyramid, but unfortunately we were housed in adjoining towers.

Monday: Elvis is still here, though he's dressed for the show in Hawaii.

Day 2 of rehearsals was more of the same; lots of phone gazing and the occasional musical vamp. We got out early, which was confusing because we still hadn't played the show all the way through (and we had the next day off completely).

Meanwhile, Kip took the van out for repairs. Three news studs, brake job, and tire repair.

(photo cred: Kip!)

Monday night was pizza night, so we all took a field trip to Grimaldi's Pizza in The Venetian. Excellent New York pizza.

We exited a side door out of The Venetian, so we walked to The Wynn for taxis. Behold the light show at The Wynn!

Tuesday: Day off. Greg, Monkeyboy, Pete, Nick, and I borrowed the van for a sightseeing adventure to the Hoover Dam. Before the dam, Nick led us on a hike through the Arizona desert.

The hike took us to the top of hill overlooking Lake Mead, the reservoir behind the Hoover Dam. Quite a view.

On the way back to Vegas, we stopped at the Hoover Dam.

The "bathtub ring" shows how low Lake Mead has gotten in the last ten years--down over one hundred feet.

I would like to know how many cell phones have accidentally slid down the face of the dam.

photo cred: Greg Lee!

The Luxor at night.

Wednesday: Show day! We had a big rehearsal (but still didn't make it through the entire show) and then the actual performance back to back.

Run time for the show itself was around two and a half hours-a very long time to sit there! Our performance was really solid. I was too focused on it to notice much else going on in the arena.

After the show, we all went our separate ways to go eat, relax, or pack, but at some point in the evening, we all made the pilgrimage over to see TJ Tyler in Mandalay Bay, still giving the people a strong Sinatra performance.

Thursday: Take me home!